


Familiar (like my mirror years ago)

by Trifoliate_undergrowth



Series: HL2 lyric titles whump :) [2]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Barney during the timeskip what trauma will he experience: The Fic, Dark Humor, Found Family Vibes, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Road Trips, THEORETICALLY this should get long we'll see, Telepathy, Vortessence powers are cool, Whump, how are they all coping?? Yes, portal storms, trauma-induced laughter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29484645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trifoliate_undergrowth/pseuds/Trifoliate_undergrowth
Summary: 20 years is a long time.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun/Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun/Original Character
Series: HL2 lyric titles whump :) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165277
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31





	1. 3rd 1st contact

He looked for Gordon, during the Incident. He didn’t have time to go back to Sector C, he had his hands full just staying alive where he was, and anyway he couldn’t know whether Gordon had stayed in the area or not—he just had to trust that he’d find his own way out. But he kept an eye out for him until the last minute, imagining him tumbling out of the vents to join him and Dr. Rosenberg’s team in their portal escape. He’d wonder, later, if the single-minded focus of his thoughts had influenced the harmonic reflux that temporarily trapped him when he tried to teleport. He’d seen stranger things that day, and it wasn’t like he had a better explanation for why it pulled him first back to Xen, where he’d been tempted to remain—there were dead scientists there, in the Black Mesa HEV suit, hazard orange easy to pick out against the strange muddy reds of the alien world; his heart had stopped every time he saw one. Several he had to pass on his way to the teleporter, or whatever the thing he needed to fix was (just another day at work, he really was just a maintenance man with a gun, huh?), and he’d stopped to remove their helmets, needing to know. None of them were Gordon. They had all been dead quite a while. But he kept thinking—

There was another he noticed just as he was teleporting out. He thought it looked more recent. It was the right height. Maybe— probably not, but just maybe. The thought stayed with him to the end. _Maybe_ —

His body flickered. He was in a parking lot—Dr. Rosenberg was shouting at him—he was on Xen. Something huge moved in the sky. His body flickered; looking down he caught a glimpse of his bones shining through the flesh of his hand. He was in Black Mesa, in a dark storage room. Light and dust and voices seeped through the grate before him. His body flickered, he felt heavy, like some invisible weight was pulling him backwards, but he stepped forwards to see where the voices came from.

“—just kill him now,” a soldier said, one arm looped under the arm of a HEV-suit clad figure that he and his buddy were dragging slowly across the ground. He remembered how heavy the suit was, how even with the powered movements it had taken Gordon ages to learn to control it. He’d nearly crushed Barney with it once in training, Barney had offered him a hand up but Gordon had lost his balance almost immediately. No wonder the soldiers didn’t want to carry the weight farther than they had to.

“And if they find the body?”

His body flickered. He was probably pretty noticeable, glowing green like this, but the danger of being shot if they saw him didn’t even register. He pressed his face to the grate, trying to see.

The man’s head nodded limply to the side, glasses cracked, blood trickling out of his pulled-back long auburn hair. Jaw slack. Unmistakable, even like this.

“What body?”

The soldiers laughed. The glow in his bones flickered, and he relaxed into it. No reason to stay. A moment later he was back in the parking lot. Dr. Bennet was pulling the gate open, Dr. Simmons had the car running, and Dr. Rosenberg was still waiting, looking at the place where he reappeared. His expression of genuine relief made Barney forgive him a little for making him do all the heavy lifting to get the portal running.

He barely registered the rest. Something about a “harmonic reflux” and being trapped teleporting endlessly between dimensions. Something about hoping to avoid the military on the road. Something something something. Dr. Bennet suggested that they’d have to fake their deaths if they wanted to survive, that the government would be looking for them. Dr. Rosenberg didn’t like the idea, wanted to wait and see what happened, but agreed that they shouldn’t try to contact any of their family yet, as it might only serve to draw them into the danger. Dr. Simmons didn’t talk much. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead and his hands trembled on the steering wheel.

None of it felt quite real. He’d just seen Gordon, dead, and now he might never see his family again, and he hadn’t even processed the morning’s alien invasion yet.

The nuclear blast was impossible to miss, even as they traveled away from it. It lit the sky, more like an exploding star than even the brightest lighting, and he had to let go of any lingering hope he’d had that Gordon had just been playing possum until he could escape from the soldiers. It didn’t matter now. Anyone still at Black Mesa was dead.

He offered to drive as night fell and Dr. Simmons started to look fatigued. The others nodded off and the van fell silent but for the rush of air and turning wheels. Soon, as the temperature dropped, he had to turn the heat on, the air a harsh noise in the otherwise silent space.

He kept remembering faces as he stared down the dark desert road ahead. Friends, coworkers, people he’d just passed in the hallway enough times to remember. He wanted to hope that between the scientists’ ingenuity and the technology hidden in Black Mesa more of them had escaped, like Dr. Rosenberg’s team, but he didn’t really believe it. The blast had been huge. They were lucky to get a head start.

Dr. Vance had a kid, he remembered. Gordon used to babysit her. She liked to ride around on his shoulders and yank on his ponytail until he teared up. Now they were both gone.

He wondered how far they were from the blast, and how much radiation they were likely to soak up.

He remembered that he never gave Dave his Gladiator VHS back. He’d meant to, but he kept forgetting, or he’d remember while one of them was on shift…

Dr. Simmons jumped awake next to him, glanced wildly around, then relaxed. He looked into the backseat and chuckled faintly. Barney looked in the rearview mirror and saw Dr. Rosenberg and Dr. Bennet slumped into each other, fast asleep, Bennet’s head on Rosenberg’s shoulder and Rosenger’s head on Bennet’s. Bennet was drooling slightly. Barney smiled.

A few hours ago these men had been strangers, but now he’d do just about anything to protect them, and he thought they felt the same about him. Being the sole survivors of an apocalyptic event would do that to you, he guessed.

Down the road, there was a shimmer of light. Heat waves, he thought, then remembered how cold it was. Then there were shapes there—upright, but inhuman, five or more of them standing in the road. He stepped on the brakes almost without thinking about it and felt the seatbelt cut into his chest. There was a muffled cry from the backseat as the others were jolted awake, and Dr. Rosenberg’s glasses bounced into the front seat.

The aliens weren’t moving. Barney snuck a glance at Dr. Simmons, who was bracing himself against the door, eyes fixed on the shapes ahead.

“What—what is that, where are my glasses?” said Dr. Rosenberg from behind them.

Barney didn’t answer, still staring at the aliens in the road.

They hadn’t moved. Then, the central one lowered itself—its legs did not bend the way that a human’s would, but the gesture was analogous to kneeling—and spread its arms.

Dr. Simmons leaned forward a little, staring. Behind them, Barney heard movement, and turned to find Dr. Bennet shakily aiming the submachine gun he’d taken from a dead soldier through the windshield.

“Hey, hey!” he put his hand over the muzzle, and Dr. Bennet swore at him. “Easy, look, they’re… not attacking.”

“Well what the hell are they doing?”

Good question. Barney looked at the aliens. They hadn’t moved.

He nudged Dr. Simmons. “Hey, listen, if this goes south, drive the van out of here immediately, ok?”

Simmons nodded grimly, and Barney put the car in park and opened the door.

“Calhoun, what are you doing?” asked Dr. Rosenberg, patting across the seat in search of his glasses. Dr. Simmons fished the glasses out of the seatwell and handed them to him before slipping into the driver’s seat.

The wind outside was cold, stealing his breath in white clouds. Barney stepped away from the van slowly, trying not to make any threatening movements. The aliens watched him, unmoving.

He unbuckled his gun holster from his leg and kicked it to the ground. The central alien moved slightly, nodding and blinking its one large eye. He’d interpret that as a good sign.

He walked forwards, his breath hanging in the light of the headlights shining from behind him. He heard a car door open and looked over his shoulder, momentarily blinded by the lights; squinting, he picked out Dr. Bennet, aiming his gun at the aliens. He gestured for him to lower it, and after a few moments, he did, reluctantly. He did not put it down.

Barney turned and walked closer to the aliens. He could see them clearly now in the light—strange, stooped forms, so entirely unlike anything on earth, feet like heavy hooves, an extra chest-arm. He’d never gotten this close to one of these things before, at Black Mesa they’d tried to kill him far sooner and he’d had to defend himself. He forced down his fear and closed the gap. He was almost close enough to touch them now.

What do you say, to an alien that may very well be about to kill you, deep in the desert, with your past life entering the atmosphere as radioactive snow?

“Hi,” he rasped, voice thick with tension. “Do you… have something to say to me?”

The aliens blinked at him. Of course, they wouldn’t understand English. Sign? No, that was still a human language…

The kneeling alien closed its eyes and glowed, a ball of green energy forming around its chest-hand.

Barney tensed, instinctively taking a step backwards, heart racing. The light from behind him was now contrasted with a green glow from in front, where he saw that all the aliens had produced similar energy balls.

Okay, slow down, use logic. This isn’t like the electricity attack you saw in Black Mesa, that made them crackle. This looks different. So (hopefully) not an attack; especially since, if they wanted to kill you, they could have done it by now. Also… he realized they appeared to be waiting, looking at him, maybe expectantly, without moving.

“Calhoun, are you okay? What are they doing?” he heard Dr. Rosenberg yelling.

Barney took a deep breath and forced himself to visibly relax.

“I don’t know—just give me a moment, okay? I’m trying to communicate,” he shouted back at him, then looked back at the aliens. Still waiting for some sign from him, energy hovering in their hands.

“Okay,” he sighed, and unbuckled and removed his vest, then undid his tie and partly unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his chest. He knelt in front of the kneeling alien, arms open. Vulnerable. “Okay. What are you trying to do?”

The beams hit him from five directions at once, jolting his body with strange energy. He felt his teeth knock together. The light was blinding, and there was a buzzing in his head, too much to think. One of the scientists was calling his name, terrified.

_His mind was opaque. Strangeness of sensation._

_Perhaps his mind was not capable of understanding them. Lower form of intelligence._

“HEY!” He focused himself with a furious effort, and suddenly realized that they were speaking to him. Somehow. And he could… talk back. “That was, uh, rude.”

_Lone vocalization, how strange its form!_

_We can understand you. Your vocalizations are not necessary and distracting. Try to reach out in your thoughts._

_Apologies for prior assessment. The human mind is so different from our own. Hard to judge its state._

“Yeah, okay, but I can understand you just fine,” he replied, mumbling. He thought he could... feel himself showing them the meaning of what he was saying, as he said it—he focused on that feeling, it was like… pushing his thoughts outwards. Weird. Okay, try this. A question.

_He wonders our purpose in contacting him. He wonders if we are his enemy still. His questions are justified. Glad meeting. We are not so different as you might expect. We have been shackled for so long. We did not fight of our own will. One of you did not fight us, made us wonder if there could be an alliance._

He saw a memory, faintly, of Black Mesa, somehow understanding that he was looking through the eyes of a different Vortigaunt—that was what they called themselves, huh—in which a dark-skinned human in a pale coat defended itself from an attacking headcrab with a sharpened tool of support-metal taken from the damaged walls of its home. It carried one of its young in its other arm. It turned, seeing the Vortigaunt, raising its weapon. The green of the electric attack’s charge-up reflected in its eyes, but the Vortigaunt hesitated, unwilling to attack a creature protecting its young.

The human dropped the tool with a loud clang and sank to its knees, free hand spread, open, empty. The other hugging its offspring close. It looked up at them, silent, expressing its helplessness.

Many Vortigaunts had cried for pity in their time of servitude, and many times their cries had been denied. It was a state they recognized.

The collar at their throat throbbed with power, but Nihilanth’s will was directed elsewhere. They could disregard their command? Strange sensation. The Vortigaunt removed the collar, shaking itself. Freedom. Perhaps the human knew a way out of this place. Perhaps they could avoid Nihilanth’s ire together. They called to their kin, bidding them remove the collars before Nihilanth’s attention returned to prevent them.

The human stood, and the memory was fading, the important part communicated, but Barney clung to the human’s appearance. He thought he recognized—was that—? He pushed the direction of their thoughts, forcing it to focus on the human’s face. It was indistinct, but he was certain now. Eli Vance, and his daughter, Alyx. They were alive. He let the memory fade, sensing that it was a relief to the others, and laughed.

It was difficult for them to maintain this connection, he sensed. His mind was difficult for them to reach. Yeah, difficult for him, too, but this was important.

_Eli Vance Alyx Vance friends, warm regard. He is happy to see them alive. It is good to see such care for their own kind. As said we are not so different._

He could feel tears welling up in his eyes, he wasn’t sure if it was from relief at knowing Eli and Alyx were alright or from the effort of communicating with the Vortigaunts or both. Were they safe still? Did they escape the blast? _Yes, they escaped the hot white cloud_. Where were they?

Leaning into the question, reaching for any memory of Eli Vance, he suddenly found Dr. Vance himself—adjusting the weight of a sleeping child in his arms, surrounded by his Vortigaunt allies, his consciousness still lingering in their interconnected minds like an afterimage. He jumped. They were aware of each other. They were aware that this was a momentary fluke, unsustainable. The Vortigaunts speaking with Barney were growing tired.

 _We’re heading east, there’s a Black Mesa storage facility I can get us into,_ Eli told him quickly, _we should be safe to regroup there. Good luck_.

The connection faded; dizzied, he found himself kneeling on the asphalt again, clawing to keep an awareness of the alien minds gathered around him. He was leaning into it more now, able to more easily follow their meaning, able to sense what they sense, and know without looking that his human friends had come closer and were gathered behind him. Bennet still held the gun but had not raised it.

_You wonder if we are still enemy. We did not fight alone. We fought at the will of our master. Slaves we have been for long ages. Freed we are now, through the actions of one of your kind. Regret we feel for those of ours killed by your kind. Regret we feel for those of your kind we killed in service of our master. Their deaths cannot be undone. But by the Freeman we are unbound. Killing can end. Forgiveness is slow, but alliance against common danger is logical._

By the Freeman. By the—he focused on that, bearing down on it. By who? By what? Who freed you, how?

_We see him. We are there with him. We see him striking down our master, freeing us of our bonds. He may not have understood what he did for us, but we are grateful. The Freeman set us free. We see him still._

And Barney saw.

Chest-deep in alien sludge, a trail of blood dried down the side of his face, firing a gun up at the alien god floating above him.

He cried out, everything tilting to the weight of his emotion. The connection broke. He was on his feet, stumbling backwards, crying Gordon’s name. Someone caught him and lowered him to the ground. His tears were cold on his face. Dr. Rosenberg was calling him frantically.

“He’s alive,” he gasped. “He—he _was_ alive? Did he survive that? I—I’m sorry I—let me back—”

He struggled to his feet, Dr. Rosenberg still holding him, steadying him. Barney gripped his arm. “Eli Vance is alive. He wants us to meet him, he’s—It’s—uh, I can, I can get us there, I saw—I—I need to ask them—”

“They’re communicating with you,” said Dr. Rosenberg. “Amazing. Are you alright? You’re bleeding.”

“Walter, for God’s sake, put that gun down,” he heard Simmons say—the first full sentence he’d heard from him. After a few moments there was an angry huff from Bennet, and then the clack of a gun being carefully set down on the asphalt.

Barney nodded that he was alright, then touched his upper lip. His hand came away red, and he tasted blood. His head still buzzed and his knees felt weak under him. The Vortigaunts were tired too, he knew it, but he had to finish their talk.

“Here,” Rosenberg handed him a handkerchief, and he pressed it to his bloody nose.

He knelt, and was flooded again with energy. He was sorry for breaking the connection. He would try to control his emotions now.

_He knew the Freeman as well? He was a friend of the Freeman._

Yeah, he sure was. And then he was spiraling into his own memories, and not sure how to stop it— _Gordon_ , the way he moved, his smell, his taste, the softness of his hair, the way he leaned into a kiss when they were alone. It just kept coming—Barney reached out for their help and they gently pulled him away, back into their own thoughts, but he couldn’t help dragging against the pull a little, reluctant to leave these memories even as he was embarrassed by accidentally beaming them at five different alien strangers. Possibly more, as he’d just seen that their minds were all connected on some level. Oh boy. Sorry about that.

Was he alive? Did they know what happened to him?

_Confusion. Alive? Not alive? Uncertain. We can no longer see him._

Barney’s shoulders sagged. He pushed the emotions aside for now. He couldn’t afford to break the connection again.

The kneeling alien raised a hand and passed it over the blood on his lip, not quite touching. He sensed it was trying to heal him, but unable to identify how.

_I too lost a mate at Black Mesa._

Tears were a human phenomenon. In the connection he saw their surprise, then realization of what it meant. How strange he was to them, soft and wet and only clumsily able to communicate.

He could easily get distracted—they all could—by curiosity at each other but there wasn’t time. So they were free now? They could be friends?

There was a shift of emotion which he couldn’t quite follow, neither a yes nor a no, finally resolving into information he could understand.

_There is more. Our insurrection cannot have been missed. It is only fair to warn you. We will be hunted. We will be found. Your world will fall. The Combine is coming. We are sorry._

“The _what_?”

He was losing his grip, but he struggled to stay conscious, to comprehend the information flooding him. The Combine. Dimension-spanning conquerors. Nihilanth’s masters. Grasping, unable to accept defeat, already on their way to recover their escaped slaves.

There was no need for words. It was not their fault. It was inevitable now. He reached out and touched the Vortigaunt in front of him. Do you have a name? I’m Barney Calhoun.

_The Barney Calhoun is becoming stressed. He must rest. His mind is not used to such activity._

He wanted to say he was just fine actually but he couldn’t make the thoughts form coherently, so they were probably right. He let himself fall out of connection, back into himself alone: he was slumped back in Dr. Rosenberg’s arms, cold rough asphalt under him, clouds of breath rolling in the glare of the headlights. Blood dripping into his mouth.

“They’re coming with us,” he slurred. “Friends. Good. Dr. Vance is expecting us. Head East. Avoid cities. We’re… getting company.” He blinked up into the night sky. His vision was swimming; for a minute he thought the stars were moving, that they were already here.

“Company?” asked Bennet, sharply.

“Not yet. We’re—safe, now, I think, but… it’s gonna be one hell of a year.”

“I think you’ve explained enough for now,” said Dr. Rosenberg. “Let’s head out, alright? Er—are you people coming in the van…? I _think_ there’s enough room.”

Some time later, Barney regained consciousness to the sight of faint sunlight. He was lying in the back of the van, his head resting on someone’s rolled-up jacket, which was spattered with blood. His nose had finally stopped bleeding, but his head swam when he tried to sit up. He heard talking and laughter from the front of the van.

Pulling himself up, he found the van absolutely crammed with humans and aliens. Every one of the Vortigaunts was staring, enraptured, at the sunrise ahead, lighting the sky with brilliant strokes of pink and gold. Dr. Rosenberg was driving, and Dr. Simmons had fallen asleep, body comfortably folded in between the door and a Vortigaunt.

Maybe they were going to be okay, Barney thought. And then the sky rippled blue and gravity shut off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "From Eden" by Hozier. (Yes I am death obsessed yes I filmed self singing In A Week in the woods near where I found a dead raccoon why do you ask)


	2. pit stop

They discovered later that the portal storms were happening across the globe. They survived their first storm relatively unharmed; though they did take a terrifying involuntary trip to Xen and spent a couple seconds very slowly falling through the low-gravity void between landmasses, the van came bouncing out the other side still on the highway, and not too badly damaged. The worst part of that (aside from thinking they were going to be stuck in a van floating through Xen) was the abruptness of gravity snapping them back down to earth. You could get whiplash from that, he thought.

After the first time, it got harder. For one thing, the fearsome Xen wildlife had a tendency to stumble through the portals and onto earth, and though they avoided passing directly through it the next portal storm dumped an entire Xen island into the desert dangerously close to them.

Dr. Rosenberg guessed the storms were an aftereffect of the Resonance Cascade, but he admitted he didn’t really know. Barney thought the Vortigaunts might have a better perspective on what was happening, but that kind of information wasn’t easy to explain with the grasp of each other’s language they had so far, and they didn’t seem too eager to mind-meld with him again or whatever that was—which was probably good, because he was still recovering from the first time. He could tell it had been pretty hard on them, too. They’d picked up a little English from him and were learning more—slowly, it didn’t come naturally to them, it was based on an entirely different form than their own language, but the sounds were comparatively simple enough to hear and repeat. Barney was having a lot more trouble learning their language, he was starting to think most of the nuance relied on being able to pick up frequencies he just couldn’t detect; still, he could more or less recognize what “hello”, “come here” or “danger” sounded like, which wasn’t nothing. But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t learn their names, or the self-designations they used?, they worked a bit differently—like short musical note progressions, but they all sounded so similar to his ears, and he could tell there was more depth there that he just couldn’t pick up. A few of the Vorts decided to solve the problem by picking human nicknames, so he ran through lists of all the names he could think of to see what they liked the sound of. The one who’d been directly in front of him when they communicated picked Christine. The quiet one who seemed to like Simmons picked Steve. One of the others decided to go with Chip. Barney had discouraged them from naming themself after a specific brand of cheese crackers, which he felt was a little too demeaning.

They picked up a notebook and some pens at a gas station and made it work. Of course, taking the Vorts into a gas station was an interesting experience for everyone, but between the bullsquid in the parking lot that Bennet absolutely destroyed with the van and the headcrab zombie they’d passed shambling down the road, he kind of figured the masquerade was over and it could only help to introduce some of the _nice_ aliens. But he’d have to be careful about how he managed that, considering most of the other aliens out there were aggressive, and the Vorts were… a lot to get used to if you were only used to earth biology.

He walked into the gas station confidently. It was just the cashier, a kid zoned out behind the counter, high-school-ish aged girl with purple streaks in her hair. He waved and smiled, very conscious of Christine struggling with the push mechanism on the door behind him. The girl stared. “Hey mom I’m gonna need to call you back” she mumbled and put down the phone she was holding.

“Hey, there! Don’t freak out, we brought some friends, they’re cool,” said Barney.

She wasn’t even looking at the Vorts, for some reason, she was staring at him with a frozen expression. Christine got the door open and plodded inside, blinking around in interest.

“This is Christine, Christine—what’s your name?” he squinted at the cashier’s nametag. “Marianne, lovely. These guys won’t hurt you, okay? It’s the others you really need to worry about.”

Marianne looked like she was hoping they wouldn’t bother her if she stayed very very still. She kept looking at _him_ , though. Weird. There was literally an alien standing right next to him.

“Hey, did you notice what was going on outsssside oh _shit_ you got Cheeze-Horns™?” he got momentarily distracted by one of the displays. Whoops. Focus. His mind felt fuzzy. He leaned on the counter. “Anyways they’re really not dangerous—”

“Calhoun,” Dr. Rosenberg took him by the arm and gently but firmly steered him away, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Hhhuh? Okay?”

He let Dr. Rosenberg lead him into the men’s room, where he turned the water on and wet a paper towel under the stream.

“I think she was more scared of you than the Vortigaunts,” said Dr. Rosenberg, passing him the damp towel, which he took automatically and held slightly away from himself, dripping on the floor.

“Huh? Why would—” he noticed his reflection in the mirror. “Oh. Jesus mother _fucking_ Christ.” He giggled breathlessly. “Okay!”

Between having his mind cracked open and stirred with an alien language, passing out, waking up disoriented and then teleporting between dimensions and trying to chat up a species whose names he couldn’t even understand, he hadn’t really thought about his appearance, or the fact that he hadn’t had a chance to clean up since Black Mesa. He was absolutely drenched in dark dried-on human blood, accented with splashes of bright yellow alien blood and smudges of regular old dirt; his shirt was still half unbuttoned, his hair was disheveled and his eyes were wild and unfocused and his upper lip was still bloody from his nosebleed. He stared at himself and for some reason all he could think was that this was the _funniest_ shit he’d ever seen, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, and he started shaking with laughter. His knees were weak. He lowered himself to the floor and curled up in the fetal position.

“Ah—don’t, don’t do that, I doubt the floor in here is sanitary!” Dr. Rosenberg hovered over him, obviously at a loss. Barney wanted to tell him that he was alright, but couldn’t seem to catch his breath long enough.

“I mean, I’d lick it for 20 dollars,” said a strange voice. “’s probly fine.” Some guy with a mullet came out of one of the stalls and blinked blearily at them. He was wearing the dirtiest jeans Barney had ever seen (close to his own level of grunginess), cowboy boots and a short fringed leather jacket over his bare chest, and he was _visibly_ drunk. “God, you sure look like you’re circling the drain.”

Barney just pointed up at him and cackled. The man snapped his fingers, pointed back, lurched to the side, opened the door by applying the weight of his body to it face-first, and left them alone.

“…Um,” Dr. Rosenberg commented. Barney curled into a tighter ball and tried to steady his breathing.

“Okay. I, uh, hah, sorry, I’m okay.” He struggled up.

Dr. Rosenberg gently dabbed at the blood on his lip with a fresh paper towel. Barney stared into the mirror. Seemed so weirdly _off_ that that was them but, flipped. That he looked like that. What was up with his eyes? They kept sliding out of focus, but they didn’t look right even when he could meet his own gaze in the mirror. He pulled the front of his shirt closed and fumbled with the buttons in the blood-stiffened fabric.

“You know, most of this is from your friend,” he said, blinking at the blood on his shirt. “Oh God I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry. You didn’t need to know that.”

Dr. Rosenberg was silent for a moment. “I’m glad he wasn’t alone. And it’s fortunate for all of us that he had the presence of mind to send you to me.”

Barney took the towel from him and finished wiping the blood off his face. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“You’re a very brave man, you know that?”

Barney chuckled, then forced himself to take a deep breath. Let’s not do that again. “I think we all are, at the moment, uh, by necessity, right?”

“Hm.”

“Can I, uh, have a minute?”

“Of course.” Dr. Rosenberg moved for the door.

“—and, uh. Thanks for that.”

He just nodded.

Left alone, Barney leaned on the sink and focused on steadying his breathing. God he really did look horrible. Didn’t seem like it should be possible to get that much blood on one person. He probably shouldn’t have tried to move Harold, should’ve listened when he said he was beyond help, but he let the man bleed out in his arms while he tried to drag him to a med station. It didn’t help. Probably just made sure his last moments were more painful.

He washed his face more thoroughly with cold water, then his hands and forearms, removing at least some of the blood and grime. It helped.

There was still some caked under his fingernails.

He touched the blood-stiffened front of his shirt, then unbuttoned it and tore it off, tying it around his waist. He couldn’t afford to dump it just yet, considering he hadn’t exactly had time to pack his bags for the trip, but. Less blood was good. Of course, his undershirt was also pretty well soaked, but. It was a bit… less.

He opened the door slowly, trying to see what the others were up to. Dr. Simmons had pulled out a map and was quietly discussing something with the cashier, whose thousand-yard stare had lessened in intensity. She was finally staring at the aliens, two of whom were exploring the walk-in beer cooler. Outside, mullet guy was kicking at the bullsquid roadkill.

Weirdly normal, he decided, and bit back another wave of manic laughter. God he needed a nap. A nap that wasn’t losing consciousness from psychic overstimulation. Hey, that sounded like a Star Trek episode.

Dr. Simmons noticed him and motioned him over. He approached slowly, but the cashier appeared to have gotten over her shock at his appearance (which was also… a bit less terrifying now). Good. Simmons was figuring out their route, but he only had the basic idea of where they were headed. Barney took the map and marker from him, trying to piece together Eli’s transferred knowledge with what he saw on the map. It wasn’t easy. He circled a general area.

“It’s, uh, big building. Top part is offices, bottom part is storage. Near… here-ish? It’s, uh, very Black Mesa, you’ll probably recognize the government-funded concrete block look.”

Dr. Simmons nodded and pulled the map back to study it. Hopefully that was enough to get them in the general area, because he wasn’t sure he could be any more coherent at the moment.

The door swung open and mullet guy stuck his head in. “Hey, you guys see a green car?”

Barney looked outside. Their van was the only car out front, and it had been just as empty when they got there, if he was remembering right.

“I think they left,” said Marianne.

“Huh? Wha’s that?”

“They left.”

“Huh. Well, that’s rude.” The man let the door swing shut and started walking away from the gas station. Barney watched him decrease in size, lurching off at a surprisingly fast speed. He had apparently decided to just walk down the highway.

“He’s going to die,” Dr. Rosenberg observed. Then: “Which color?”

Barney looked at him without comprehension for a couple seconds. He was holding two New Mexico souvenir shirts. “Oh, good idea.”

He picked orange. It was a nice, warm color.

Before they left, he fetched his backup handgun from the car, along with a clip of ammo, and laid them on the counter for Marianne. “Look, if you see an alien that’s not a Vortigaunt, it’s probably gonna try to kill you. Uh, critters like the one outside usually take a few shots to go down, and they spit acid at you if they get close enough. And then there’s… did you see the, like, alien-parasite-zombie out there?”

“Yeah, that’s Davey. He had night shift.”

“Oh, damn.” He pushed the gun forward. “Sounds like a rough job.”

“I think yours might be worse.”

It might be. Have been. Oh hey, he was unemployed now, technically. He hadn’t really thought about that. He did still have a science team to protect, though, so he’d consider himself on the job. Just… seemed right. The others didn’t really know how to shoot a gun. Bennet thought he did, but his grip was wrong, and he was absolutely going to hurt himself if he actually tried to fire it. The thought was an odd kind of comforting—something familiar he could do. Just keep these guys alive for now, he’d work out the rest later on.

Back in the van, he wriggled out of his bloodied undershirt and shook out the New Mexico t-shirt, which had a cactus and sunset design. He paused in putting it on when he noticed the Vortigaunts staring at him curiously. “Oh, hey, never seen a partially peeled human before?” He slapped his belly like a bongo drum.

Dr. Rosenberg wheezed from the front seat. “Do you think you could call it _anything_ else?”

Christine reached out, he thought to touch him, but instead passed a faintly glowing hand over his chest. He felt… something, some brush of energy against his skin; then the hand was withdrawn. Huh, neat.

Dr. Bennet slid into the driver’s seat, holding the map and muttering under his breath. “They make these things so tiny—alright, buckle up back there.”

Barney pulled the shirt on. It had that stiff new shirt feel, but it was clean, so it felt pretty good. Bennet was already driving so he scrambled for his seatbelt. Dr. Bennet seemed to like driving the most out of all of them, but he was also the most prone to road rage. He didn’t know how he managed it, considering the highway was generally pretty empty, but still.

And, just as he was thinking this, the van veered suddenly to the side, and Dr. Rosenberg yelped in protest.

“Headcrab!” yelled Bennet, driving off the road to hit it. It bounced off the fender with a dying screech and a thud, landing right next to the mullet guy, who scratched his head and looked at it without apparent concern.

“Oh, hey, it’s that guy,” said Barney, and opened his door. “Hey!”

The guy looked up.

“You need a ride?”

Dr. Rosenberg groaned. “Must you?”

The guy shrugged. “Nah. I’m good.”

He set off walking down the highway again.

Barney leaned back into the van. “Come on,” he said, quieter, “He’s gonna die if we don’t take him.”

“…You have a point,” said Dr. Rosenberg, relenting.

“Definitely will,” said Dr. Bennet. “But that’s none of our business.”

“Hey, is leaving a member of the species who’s done nothing to hurt us alone to die in the desert really the good example of humanity you want to show to the Vorts?” asked Barney, grinning.

“Shut up! Fine, but you be the one to talk him into it,” said Dr. Bennet.

“Do we have room?” asked Dr. Rosenberg.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll just get in the back again,” said Barney, and leaned out the door. “Hey, dude! I’m serious about the ride, it’s hot as hell out here and there’s aliens.”

Dr. Bennet slowly drove forwards, catching up with the guy, who paused to look at them, apparently considering.

Barney held up a bag of Cheeze-Horns™. “We’ve got snacks.”

The guy climbed into the car, and Barney undid his seatbelt and tumbled into the back to make room.

“Welcome to the apocalypse road trip, I will be your conductor,” deadpanned Dr. Bennet, immediately speeding up. Barney leaned over the seat back to shut the still-open door. “You got a name?”

“Merlin,” said the guy, “Is… a name… that you can call me.”

“Rad,” said Barney. “I’m Barney.”

“That’s a dumb name.”

“I’m not sharing my Cheeze-Horns™.”

“Dude, that’s such a _great_ name.”

“I might be convinced to share my Cheeze-Horns™.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New party member… he has incredibly high constitution + poison resist, low everything else…  
> Also! As it turns out, all the behavior that makes you come across as just a chill nonthreatening chummy guy when you’re NOT covered in blood, in fact has the exact opposite of that effect when you ARE covered in blood. WHO’D’A’THUNK


	3. Radial Symmetry

He woke to the van jolting out from under him and Bennet swearing. He was—or, had been—curled up in the back, but now he was floating. He turned his head, hair swirling weightlessly across his forehead, and found Christine floating next to him. Blue light flickered across the back windshield, then cleared. He saw stars to his left, incredibly bright, and a shining blue shape on his right.

There was a quiet gasp of recognition from one of the scientists.

Barney pressed his face to the rapidly cooling glass and looked down at the earth below them.

Wow this was definitely going to kill them, but what a way to die. It was beautiful—

Blue crackled across the glass and he was slammed back into the bottom of the trunk. The windshield went dark with swirling dust, and there was a horrible cracking sound like a boulder breaking in half. The van swerved.

He sat up, blinking, lightheaded and a bit bruised but otherwise safe, and turned to check on Christine. They were clinging to the back of the seats and seemed to be alright.

The van lurched again and Barney caught himself against the back, watching another curtain of blue light ripple down the road just to the left of them.

“I _hate_ these things,” Bennet said, jerking the steering wheel to avoid another wave. Barney took his cue from Christine and wrapped his arms around the seat back in front of them.

“Well that was fun,” he said. “Especially the part where we lived to remember it, pretty stoked about that.”

“Dude, was that like, space?” Merlin shouted back at him.

“Yeah man we went to space for a little bit,” said Barney.

Dr. Rosenberg twisted around to look back at them, absolutely beaming. He did not look like he’d processed the ‘nearly got killed’ part of this ‘nearly got killed by the vacuum of space’ experience. Fair, Barney thought, it _was_ pretty cool, and they _weren’t_ dead.

There was a sharp crackling sound, like stepping on ice, and his vision went blue. Another sound, heavier—like something falling, or tearing?, he wasn’t sure—drowning out something Dr. Rosenberg had started to say; and then he was falling. Vaguely he realized he must’ve fallen out of the van, but he didn’t hit the road, he was still falling and it was very cold. He was back before he’d had time to guess where he’d gone to and oh _there_ was the road. He was above it and saw asphalt racing past under his hands and had just enough time to think _oh no_.

Then, presumably, he hit the ground. His brain seemed to have stopped recording for a split second. When it came back he was rolling down the road like a barrel. Something fell nearby with a crash. His body finally came to rest on its side, facing the trunk lid which had come to rest not far away, at the edge of the road. Sheets of dust rolled between him and it. He could see the portal storm sparking blue somewhere in the background, half-hidden in more clouds of dust.

He could feel his heart racing in his chest, so he knew he was alive. But he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t move. He was beyond any capacity for panic, but it was a horrible feeling. He tried to force his lungs to move.

There were shapes moving in the clearing dust ahead. Not very big, but taller than him, it seemed, considering he had his cheek mashed into the pavement. Three, milling about in confusion in the dust left from the storms. One disappeared in a shower of blue sparks even as he watched. The others appeared to notice him and broke into a four-legged run, leaving the storms behind. Short squat shapes, no recognizable head by earth standards.

When the elevator gave out at the start of all this, in Black Mesa, the first thing he saw when he managed to climb out was a Houndeye tearing at the motionless body of another security guard. That was about to be him.

A trickle of breath made it into his lungs, but he still couldn’t move. He pulled for air, desperate, getting only a little bit more each time he inhaled, like his lungs couldn’t remember how to work. They were going to reach him before he could react.

A submachine gun fired from somewhere behind him, and a second later one of the Vortigaunts, running on all fours, jumped over him and stood between him and the Houndeyes to charge their attack, muttering something in their own language. The gunshots continued for a few moments, now focusing on the second Houndeye; then it all fell silent.

The Vortigaunt turned and passed a glowing hand over his side, saying something he guessed was a question, but couldn’t decipher beyond that. Barney was panting now. He could move. He pushed himself up on his arms, lifting his head from the ground.

“Oh thank God,” he heard from behind him, and the sound of running feet slowing to a stop.

Shakily, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, and realized that his body was smoking. Ice crystals on his clothes were evaporating in the sun. The next thing he noticed was that his hands were bleeding. He looked around. The van—back hatch missing—was about forty feet down the road. Merlin and one of the Vortigaunts were standing there, and the others—minus Dr. Simmons, who had disappeared—were just reaching him. Christine was limping towards them at an unsteady four-legged run, coming from a slightly different direction. They’d probably been thrown out of the van too—apparently onto the side of the road rather than the pavement, which looked to have been a bit softer, fortunately. They didn’t seem to be bleeding, at least that he could see, hopefully they’d just escaped with a few bruises.

“You okay?” asked Barney, reaching for them, then wondered if that was a question they would recognize. The other Vortigaunt went to them and repeated the gesture over them, then turned to him.

“Good,” they said carefully.

“Good,” said Barney, nodding.

“Barney Calhoun,” the Vortigaunt continued, “Good?”

“I dunno, I think so?”

“You’re ah, bleeding a bit,” said Dr. Rosenberg, sinking down on the pavement next to him.

“A bit yeah,” said Barney.

Dr. Rosenberg looked down the road at the Houndeyes. “I don’t—I don’t know what happened,” he said, “I couldn’t—my gun wouldn’t fire—”

“You still have the safety on, genius,” said Dr. Bennet.

“Oh,” said Dr. Rosenberg, looking like he was about to cry. Barney pulled him into a hug, awkwardly, trying not to put his bleeding hands on his clothes.

“Buddy it’s fine. But I should probably give you guys some shooting lessons while we’re stopped.”

“He needs it,” said Bennet.

“You do too, be honest, did you hurt yourself firing that thing?” Barney asked him. A sullen silence answered his question. He let go of Dr. Rosenberg, leaving some spots of blood down the back of his shirt.

“I wonder if we have a first aid kit or anything in the car,” Dr. Bennet muttered, and turned. “Oh, never mind, at least one person was thinking ahead.”

The other three were walking towards them now. Dr. Simmons appeared to have found a first-aid kit.

“Dude, did you go to mars?” yelled Merlin, the only one still smiling.

“No,” said Barney, then “I don’t— _think_ so? I might have. That’d be cool I guess.”

“That would be cool,” Merlin agreed. “Oh shit dude you got some nasty road rash there.”

Dr. Simmons sat on the other side of him from Dr. Rosenberg and flipped open the first-aid kit. Barney checked himself over. He’d scraped the heels of his hands pretty bad—he’d taken the skin right off the left; the right wasn’t as bad, it just looked like a bad scrape. He’d also scraped up the outside of his arms and his left shoulder, tearing through the fabric of his shirt. It felt like he’d banged up his knees, too, though the thick fabric of his pants hadn’t quite torn. He balled his left hand into the fabric of his shirt to slow the bleeding.

“Hey maybe we should get out of the road?” Dr. Bennet suggested, walking around them. “Wouldn’t be much of an improvement to get hit by a truck—well, nevermind. Look at that!” He set off down the road—Barney, looking through the clearing dust, saw the road was cracked apart, chunks of asphalt heaved apart as if there had been an earthquake. One of the Vortigaunts raced after Bennet, leaping effortlessly across a crevice to balance on a thrown-up chunk of earth and survey the damage.

Dr. Simmons patted the blood off his right hand and tried to clean the scrape as gently as possible. There was definitely some grit in there. Barney helped pick some of it out where he could feel it, but the blood made it hard to find anything. They got it more or less clean and while Dr. Simmons bandaged it Dr. Rosenberg started on his other hand. Simmons taped down a loose end of gauze and then paused, examining the shape of his hand.

“Oh, yeah, didja notice I’m a scientific curiosity?” said Barney, raising his hand with a smile and wiggling his fingers slightly—not much, he realized it hurt as soon as he tried it. “Pretty neat huh?”

Dr. Simmons carefully held his hand up opposite Barney’s, lining up their fingers without touching his bandaged palm. Barney’s sixth finger was more obvious like this, an extra pinky.

“I give really good handshakes,” said Barney, and Simmons nodded and double-checked his bandage.

It had made learning sign slightly more complicated. He’d been worried Gordon would be distracted by how different his signs would look. Actually, Gordon never had trouble understanding him (for that reason, at least; he had plenty of moments where he couldn’t remember how to say what he wanted to but was too stubborn to give up trying and resort to verbal speech), but he _was_ fascinated with watching his hands. He remembered explaining it, asking if his signs were clear enough, and Gordon signed that they were, but could he look at his hand? Of course he could—like Barney wouldn’t take any excuse for Gordon to hold his hand? He’d just spent his weekend trying to learn basic sign so he could understand him, safe to say he was smitten. And if he hadn’t completely lost his head before he did now with the way Gordon took his hand in both of his and slowly examined every inch of it with gentle fingers. Finally he let go and signed that it looked like a starfish, spelling it out when Barney didn’t understand the sign.

“A starfish?” he asked, and Gordon went off on a tangent that he only barely followed, something about radial symmetry, culminating in

“You’re going to make me regret not becoming a biologist.”

“Why?”

“You have a lovely skeleton.”

“Um. Thanks?”

“That... Sounded like a threat. It was meant to be a compliment. I’m not very good at compliments.” It translated, though, through his expression if nothing else.

“I feel like in the interest of giving honest feedback I gotta agree with you, but I got what you meant, so don’t sweat it,” Barney had answered, and Gordon just beamed like the sun and showed him how to sign starfish. Stars, pointing up at the sky, fish, hand swimming through the water at about waist height. Gordon later told him that he was panicking that whole conversation, desperate to talk to him but everything coming out wrong (“ _why the hell did I start talking about starfish? I wanted to say I loved you_.”) As it turned out Barney hadn’t been the only one with a crush. And now he was thinking about him again. Anyways, it distracted him from the feeling of Dr. Rosenberg digging gravel out of his left hand.

Gordon _hadn’t been dead_ when he saw him at Black Mesa. He’d been badly hurt, though, there was no denying that. He might have gotten up and kept fighting for a few hours, but finally collapsed after killing the Nihilanth and killed by any of the many hazards of Xen while he was down. Even if he made it back to Black Mesa, how would he have survived the bomb? Surely going to Xen and fighting an alien overlord must have taken a while, would he have had the time to get away from the blast after returning? God what if he _almost_ did, what if he was off in the desert somewhere dying of radiation poisoning?

He was probably dead. Try as he might it was hard to imagine any other possibility. He’d already seen him dead (he thought) once, Barney told himself; this was no different. It just sucked that he’d got his hopes up, there, for a moment.

But what if? If he could kill the Nihilanth, was it really too much to hope that he could also survive the encounter and make it back to earth? Probably, yeah. But he’d been wrong the first time. And the Vortigaunts hadn’t thought he was dead, though they hadn’t had a very good explanation for where he’d gone to.

This is why he shouldn’t let himself think about things. Gordon was dead. But he’d seen him, he kept remembering his expression on Xen—terrified but determined, jaw clenched, hands steady on his gun. _Alive_.

They bandaged the worst of his scrapes. He was a bit worried about how he’d get the bandages off his hands once the blood had dried, but that, and whether they’d missed any gravel, was a problem for tomorrow Barney to solve. In the meantime, he was patched up enough to use his hands, more or less. He pulled Bennet away from the destroyed road and got Simmons to pull the van onto the shoulder, just in case. Then he took inventory of the gun collection in his backpack. He had his own M9 semiautomatic pistol, two replacements he’d picked up, and all the ammo for them he’d been able to find. One Colt Python, a very nice gun but slower to reload and he wasn’t quite as comfortable using it. And the military assault rifle that Bennet had adopted, which Barney _kind of_ knew how to shoot. Honestly he was still a little intimidated by it, but he was much more intimidated by the fact that Bennet was going to keep carrying it around whether he knew how to use it or not, so he’d better give him as much instruction as he could, for all their sakes.

Dr. Simmons took one of the spare M9s only after some coaxing from Dr. Rosenberg, stayed for Barney’s basic crash course in gun safety and then left to see about reattaching the hatch to the rest of the car so they could drive without creating a horrible wind tunnel. Christine and two of the other Vortigaunts went with him. Barney tried offering one of them a gun; they said a few words he didn’t recognize even a little bit and demonstrated that their large two-clawed hand wouldn’t wrap around the hand grip. They had their energy attack thing, anyways, and he could personally attest to the effectiveness of that. He just didn’t want them to feel left out in case one of them wanted to _try_ shooting a human gun. …Couldn’t be much more dangerous than giving a gun to the scientists, which he was already doing.

Right, so they had Dr. Simmons, who didn’t like guns and probably wouldn’t use his if he could possibly avoid it, Merlin, who just went “nah thanks man I’m a pacifist” and went with Dr. Simmons, Dr. Bennet, who was _way too attached_ to a gun he didn’t know how to use, and Dr. Rosenberg, who had just dropped his pistol on his foot and hurt himself and was so embarrassed about it that he was in danger of doing it again. And Barney, who was having trouble demonstrating the correct grip with his bandaged hands.

He took half an hour and drilled Rosenberg and Bennet on the basics. Dr. Bennet wasted a lot of ammo spraying shots into the desert but he was getting better at handling his gun, and Dr. Rosenberg could reliably hit the bush they were using as a target (and hadn’t dropped his gun again.) Meanwhile there were intermittent crashing noises from behind them as the rest of the team tried various ways of making the hatch stay on the back of the van. At one point there was a flash of green and he saw one of the Vortigaunts apparently trying to fuse it onto the car, but that didn’t work either and it slid off onto the ground with another crash of failure. He was surprised the glass was still there. By the time he’d ended the shooting lesson they more or less had it in place, and Dr. Simmons was attempting to duct tape it onto the van with a grim expression.

It occurred to Barney that they hadn’t seen any cars from either direction for as long as they’d been out here. Was that normal? They’d gotten out of the truly deserted area around Black Mesa, surely there were people somewhere—were they all hiding at home? Probably, now with the portal storms on top of the aliens. But it felt strange to stand there and think about how alone they were, and how very small, a speck in the vast expanse of forbidding space around them, the road behind them cut off and the road ahead entirely blank. If he thought about it too much it felt like he was losing track of his body, slipping out into the emptiness around them, evaporating like water in the hot sun.

He shook himself out of it and focused on the details of what was around him. Think too much about anything past the immediate and you lose your focus, your aim gets shaky, you die. He’d have time to think once they were safely reunited with Dr. Vance. Hopefully he was right about this place being safe, but he didn’t have any better ideas, and on some level he was just desperate to find other survivors, people who would recognize them and who they’d be able to talk to about what had just happened. Theoretically. Not that he was sure he wanted to do that yet.

Dr. Rosenberg climbed into the back and managed to tie the lid on with a shoelace. It more of less held it together, combined with an entire roll of duct tape on the outside. They’d have to be careful not to lean on it. Or drive too fast. Or hit any bumps. But it would hopefully stay on for the rest of the trip, at least. They all piled back into the van (Dr. Rosenberg refused to let Barney get in the back again, so Merlin and one of the Vortigaunts ended up back there) and Dr. Simmons drove off at a careful creep with Dr. Bennet pestering him to go faster. Christine hovered over Barney, inspecting his bandages, then reached through him with a gentle tug of green energy. He understood somehow that they were trying to heal him but confused by the differences between their bodies. He leaned into the slow pulse of the energy flowing through him. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not but he thought he could trace the flow of it, cradling him, pooling around him. He wasn’t sure if it was helping on a physical level but it did make him feel a bit… better. More present? He could fall asleep like this.

Something flashed past the left window. The first car they’d passed in he wasn’t sure how long. He twisted to look down the road at it and identified two things at once: it was a black and white police car, and it had come to an abrupt stop. As he watched it switched its lights on and turned to follow them.

“Oh no,” he said.

“Oh shit!” said Merlin, sounding completely unconcerned.

“Oh hell no. Speed up,” said Dr. Bennet.

“…You’re suggesting I try to outrun the police, on a desert highway, in _this_?” asked Dr. Simmons, slowing and pulling the car onto the shoulder.

“Can we hide the guns?” asked Dr. Rosenberg.

“I’m a lot less worried about the guns than the five giant aliens,” said Barney, “But Bennet please try to put the rifle somewhere less visible, that’s… probably not going to help us any.”

“I disagree,” said Bennet.

“Hey,” Dr. Rosenberg raised his voice, “We’re not shooting any _people_.”

“We might not need to, I think I could be very persuasive!”

“Put it away!”

Barney looked at the car pulling to a stop behind them, still swirling with energy, feeling it gather in him and focus like a laser.

Christine was afraid.

They were all afraid.

_They were dying. They were being killed by the humans even when they tried to express that they were not a threat they were being hunted down like animals_

Christine made a sudden gesture and said something he recognized as meaning _stop_. He shuddered back to himself, gasping, head buzzing with the memories of so many deaths. Dr. Rosenberg was saying something, he sounded scared. He saw that the cop had gotten out of his car to head towards them, but he paused as the ground shook. He didn’t need to look to know there was another portal storm building. One of the other Vortigaunts (chirp-falling-tone) was watching it billow down the desert towards them, kicking up a dust storm. The cop was looking at it doubtfully, apparently trying to decide if he should get back in his car to wait it out. Barney turned and flung himself at the door, but his body was uncooperative and he ended up lying in the seatwell. He had to talk to him but he didn’t know if he could be coherent. He had to.

The car shook. Blue light streaked across his vision, then was gone. Dr. Rosenberg pulled him up.

“I ha—I need—talk to him,” slurred Barney, grabbing futilely at the door handle as he was pulled back into his seat.

“You _need_ to sit down,” said Rosenberg. “What was that?”

Barney looked at him, trying to think of any words that could possibly be appropriate. Dr. Rosenberg frowned at him, and he realized his nose was bleeding again.

“You can’t keep doing this,” said Rosenberg to Christine, “You’re going to kill him.”

“No that one was me, they’re upset too,” said Barney, checking where the cop was. The storm seemed to have passed them, and he was walking towards them again.

There was another shock, muted, from far away, and he looked up, pressing a hand to the roof of the van, feeling— _stop it_ , growled Christine, afraid that he needed to be healed but that any interference would make him worse—

Somewhere high above them the distortions in space were being harnessed and pulled with intent. They were coming. They were coming and there was no time and he had to find his words and he couldn’t breathe.

Outside the van, a loud “holy SHIT!!” told him that the cop had noticed the Vortigaunts. He was out of time.

Dr. Rosenberg tried to grab at him but he threw himself to the side, scrambled past Christine, managed to throw the door open this time, and next thing he knew was standing unsteadily on the asphalt with a freaked-out policeman aiming a gun right in his face. Okay, good, got him looking at you rather than the Vorts at least. Now say something. Explain you’re not a threat but make it good this time.

“Hey there,” he said, voice breaking.

That’s… a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *passes out for 20 years a couple weeks then snaps back into it with another chapter* HELLO WE’RE BACK eughhghghhh technical brain difficulties. anyways. enjoy my little scribblings relevant to this chapter  
> I have been informed of canon inaccuracies! I had a minor existential crisis and did some crowbar-ing of the planned plot. Anyways allow me to introduce you to my new policy: malicious canon compliance, in which I put way too much effort into canon compliance, thus making it unreasonably complicated, while complaining about it! Anyways all that to say I’ve done some minor edits on chapters 1-2, mainly Black Mesa East hasn’t specifically been mentioned yet (that’s On Another Continent), and the Vorts don’t physically touch Barney (thought it would be fun to explore how they interact with their environments differently than humans, who are comparatively very tactile). Might tweak some more stuff later but at the current moment I can’t think of anything and I’m just trying to keep this actually going forward with new chapters because when I go for a while without one I start to panic that this is going to become Yet Another Sad Abandoned WIP to Haunt my Psyche. So ONWARDS  
> Anyways Barney has six fingers because of a post I saw but can’t find now with an early promotional poster for Blue Shift where someone screwed up and gave him six fingers in the art, which they fixed later (his hands still look kind of messed up lol. Fair, hands are hard. Pour one out for that artist.) I KNOW the post exists because at least one other person remembers seeing it so I’m not just crazy but ahgksdkfkl I CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE I’M LOSING MY GODDAMN MIND. IT EXISTS OK? You’ll just have to believe me. Anyways if any of you have a link to that or any related information to prove this is a thing that exists that my brain didn’t just make up PLEASE send it to me I will love u forever  
> Additionally: Barney’s experience brought to you by 1. The time I jumped out of a friend’s treehouse (to be fair I was jumping onto a swingin’ vine but I was a couple years older and heavier than him and stripped the vine right off the branch and went STRAIGHT down and winded myself pretty good) and 2. The time a german shepherd on a leash that I had a death grip on went into a full-on sprint for the cows he was Not supposed to chase and I was being dragged behind him at speeds impossible to achieve alone, such that I was basically floating and my feet would occasionally touch the ground to keep me upright, and realized that we were about to hit an eroded drop-off where I would presumably sail off into the fuckign air and went “oh no” and then woke up lying on the ground like 20 feet past that point with my skin burning like I’d been dragged but with zero fucking memory of anything between those points, at which point I crawled over to the dog and hugged him


End file.
